“They were just scratch-offs,” he says, his voice muffled from inside the dumpster. “And you’re the one who got us kicked out of the store. You have no poker face whatsoever.”
“C’mon,” I say. “I was nervous. It was my first heist.”
“First and last. You were never very good at playing it cool. Even as a twelve-year-old.”
“Especiallyas a twelve-year-old.”
He tosses another bag out, and as I poke through it I think about that ill-conceived expedition. It was just after Teddy’s dad left, after he’d lost all their savings and more, and Teddy had become obsessed with money.What would you do if you had a million dollars?he’d ask us constantly, casually, as if it was nothing more than a trivia question, an idle thought; as if he wasn’t thinking about what that kind of money could mean, with his dad’s debts still hanging over them and his mom working long hours at the hospital and him coming home to an empty apartment after school.
Even then it always broke my heart a little.
“So,” I say, kicking at the snow. “Whatwouldyou do if you had a million dollars?”
Teddy’s head pops up and over the rim of the metal container. He squints down at me, looking uneasy. “I can’t think about that yet. Not until we find the ticket.”
“I remember what you always used to say….”
“What?” he says, but there’s a catch in his voice and it’s clear he already knows the answer.
“You wanted to get your old apartment back,” I say. “For your mom.”
He smiles almost involuntarily, remembering the solemn vow he made to us, and for a second he looks like he’s twelve years old again, dreaming about untold riches.
“That,” he says, “and a pinball machine.”
“I’m pretty sure there was talk of a pool table too.”
“At least it was better than Leo’s idea. He just wanted a puppy.”
“A boxer,” I remind him. “Because he thought boxing was cool. Oh, and a thousand colored pencils.”
Teddy laughs at the memory. “Doesn’t exactly add up to a million dollars.”
“Leo has always been a man of simple tastes.”
He leans an elbow on the edge of the dumpster, gazing down at me. “And you—you’d never tell us what you wanted.”
He’s right. I never played along the way the boys did, losing themselves to their daydreams. The things I want most in the world can’t be bought with money.
Except, maybe, for one thing. Standing there in the snow, I think about the photograph I keep on my dresser, a picture of my parents in Kenya, where they met in the Peace Corps. In it, the two of them are gazing at each other as the sun sets behind them, the savanna bathed in golden colors, a lone giraffe silhouetted in the distance.
That, I think, would be my wish. To travel there myself.
But all these years later I still can’t bring myself to say it out loud.
“I always knew anyway,” Teddy says, and I look up at him, surprised.
“You did?”
He nods. “It’s the only logical thing. If you had a million dollars and you could buy anything in the world, I’m one hundred percent positive that you would absolutely, without a doubt choose to have your very own…ostrich.”
It’s so completely random—so utterly ridiculous—that I begin to laugh.“What?”
“An ostrich,” he says, like this should be obvious, likeI’mthe one talking nonsense. “You know. The giant bird.”
“Why in the world would you think I’d want an ostrich?”
“Because that’s how well I know you,” he says, deadpan. “I’m probably the only person on the planet who realizes you wouldn’t be happy unless you owned an enormous flightless bird.”
